The skipper gave Nolan the job of remote inspection while the gross examination of the system went on. Nolan had a knack for such work, and much of it naturally fell to him.
"Okay!" he said resignedly, "Another day, another world!"
"My private nightmare," said the skipper, with humor, "is bug-eyed monsters. Try not to find 'em here, Nolan. Eh?"
He'd said that eight times before on this voyage. Nolan said, "My private nightmare is getting home and finding out that while we've been finding new worlds for men to live on, they've started a war and made Earth a place to die on. Try to arrange that it doesn't happen before we get home. Eh?"
He'd said that eight times before on this voyage, too.
"I wish us both luck. Nolan," said the skipper. "But that ball out yonder looks plausible as a nest for bug-eyed monsters!"
He shook his head and went out. He was still being humorous. Nolan set up his instruments and went to work. As he worked, he tried to thrust away the thoughts that came to everybody on Earth every day. They were as haunting, some light-centuries from Earth, as back at home. There was the base the Coms were building on the moon. The WDA had an observatory there, but the Coms were believed to be mounting many more rockets than telescopes. And there was that unsatisfying agreement made between the Coms and WDA just before the Lotus took off. Each promised solemnly to notify the other of all space take-offs before they happened. The idea was to prevent a mistake by which a Pearl-Harbor-style attack might be inferred when it wasn't really happening. The fact that it could be prepared against was evidence of the kind of tension back on Earth.
But the Lotus was far from home. She lay some seventy-odd millions of miles out from the sol-type star Fanuel Alpha, whose third planet Nolan was to look over.
He sent off a distance-pulse and took angular measurements of the planet's disk. The ratio of polar to equatorial diameters was informative. The polar flattening said that the day lasted about thirty hours. Almost like Earth's. The equatorial diameter of 8200 miles was much like Earth's. The inclination of the axis of rotation indicated seasons—not exaggerated, but much like the seasons on the third planet of Sol. The size of the ice-caps indicated the overall planetary temperature. There were clouds. In fact, there was a cloudmass in the southern hemisphere that looked just like an Earthly tropic storm undergoing the usual changes as it went away from the equator. This was very much like Earth! And the dark masses which were seas....